Night Tracks
by mkpia
Summary: Milan Simon piece not Theo-related like A stroll, A ballad. A bit hanging in the air.


**Paul Sullivan and the Girl With A Weird Name That Was Not A City**

Milan had spent the whole evening with her friends in the Hufflepuff CR. It had been so long since they hung out, because of the stupid new curfews that left you with barely any social life. She, Lou, Sam and Kevin had had fun and were able to just catch a break. The pressure about studies at Hogwarts was seriously intense. They didn't want their time to end just yet so they had stayed up well into the night, although it was a week night. Easier that way since the prefects were really out full force on the weekends, although the curfew was longer then.

At around midnight, when a Prefect -Johanna or something, had come over to where they sat by the fire to tell them to go to sleep soon, Kevin had leaned just so on the couch in front of Milan so that her face was concealed. Milan had stifled a laugh in the pillows and had made herself as little as possible. After Johanna –or maybe it was Johan- left, they had the common room to themselves. Milan and Kevin had high-fived and the four friends had resumed talking, Milan finally getting to enjoy the company of her friends.

Paul didn't hang out much with his classmates. They were too intense about their studies for his liking, and they seemed to only talk about that anyways. Their spirited debates rarely caught his interest, and the kind of fun he prefered, they did not approve of. That was with the guys though. The girls were kind of worse in a way. He never missed an occasion to ridicule Chang and her posse. The only exception was Amanda Jones, a delicious girl who didn't need Cho Chang to be popular. She had attributes of her own, if you will. So he made nice with her. Only the rest of his house turned their backs on him. Whatever.

He should have been sent to Slytherin anyways, like Jason. It was _always_ Jason. Paul was building some deep resentment towards his youger brother. But it had been like that ever since they were children. Jason always got it all.

Back to the topic though.

That night he was sneaking around the castle in the middle of the night, on his way back from Hogsmeade where he had just purchased a large jar of bat spleen. The potion that countered the effects of black magic was becoming one of his most-used potions, maybe even more so than the bruise-healing potion, which for a Quidditch player was saying something.

It was pretty easy to make once you knew what you were doing, the only catch being the hard to get ingredients. He'd scored a good supply of Bouncing Spider Juice (I'm not even making that shit up) but the bat spleen was tricky because the potion required a lot of it.

He needed it by the week-end, and it was already Thursday, so he'd had to go as soon as he got the chance. It was getting very tricky to sneak out now that the castle was under lockdown and the Dementors roamed the place.

But he had done it. Again. Slytherin would have fitted him perfectly, he had thought once more with a pang in his chest.

So that very night at around 2am, he was only one floor below the entrance to the tower, when unexpectedly he saw the bright light of a wand coming from an adjacent corridor some ways ahead. Fast, he scrambled to a nearby alcove, careful of the jar in his hands, and stood there rigidly immobile, flattened against the ancient stone. Must have been MacGonagall, her magic always flared strongly on her nightly patrols of the castle. The Scottish woman took very seriously to her task of protector. Bloody Gryffindor.

The professors and Heads on patrol always took seemingly random shifts, as a regular pattern would only allow weaknesses into their watch. It would be easy to come up with a plan to walk around their schedules. Believe it, Paul had tried. He had observed and taken note of any deplacements, had drawn charts and cross-referenced the collected data with his professors's schedules. Well, maybe sorting him in Ravenclaw made a little sense. But it was all in vain.

He had learnt some interesting bits of info though, so it wasn't exactly all for nothing. For instance he would be careful not to get detention a Thursday, because Snape monitored dententions from Friday trough Sunday. Typical sadist behavior, seeing as weekends were the worst time to be serving detention.

The tall boy cursed under his breath. Now the repercussions would be thrice as bad if he got caught. Not only would he have to face McGonagall at 2 in the morning, he would be spending lovely time in the company of the potions master, _and_ he would have to cancel his date with Amanda. He could _not_ get caught.

His heart skipped a beat when he heard soft footseps coming quickly in his direction, from the other end of the corridor this time, the way he had come himself. When he heard them stop right at his level, he thought he was dicovered. Belatedly, his brain registered that the footsteps had in fact been furtive, at the same time he saw someone much smaller than him flatten themselves inside _his_ alcove. He would have said something, but the light from the wand up ahead was getting closer. When Paul saw the eyes of the girl beside him take him in and widen, and saw her lips part, he put his free hand over her mouth to silence her. She better not get him caught, he thought in angry annoyance.

Milan tried to think fast. She knew this corridor fairly well: where could she hide? She dashed ahead as silently as she could manage as she recalled a small alcove nearby, one that she passed everyday.

Her steps were light and quick but her heart almost gave when she realised somebody was already there. A vicious "shit" started escaping her lips before a hand clamped on her mouth. It didn't even occur to her to be indignant when she saw the light of the wand she had noticed earlier get closer.

Milan calculated frantically in her mind: would she have time to readjust herself and the tall person –it was a boy, she saw- in a better hiding position? Or would their movements give them away?

She glanced towards the corridor and realised that the bearer of the wand was still far away, at the beginning of the corridor. She had been misled by the bright light emanating from it, but she noticed now it was too diffuse to be very close.

She acted fast, moving swiftly between the boy and the wall, moving them to the small blind corner of the alcove. He was now looming over her, standing very close and though it was dark and she couldn't really see his face, she could guess at the frown on his features. She took a critical look at him. His stupid shiny blond hair reflected the faint moonlight coming through the high windows of the corridor. Milan reached up and snatched his black hood up on his head, letting her hand trail back down along his robes, careful not to touch him. He looked down at her with eyes unreadable, making her nervous.

"Your hair was shining" she breathed defensively. Still not breaking eye-contact, he bent his head slowly, slowly, down toward hers. Milan stopped breathing as she thought frantically about was he was about to do. Would he really kiss her? The nerve of him! Taking advantage of-

-she stopped breathing when his forehead touched hers. "Your eyes are glowing" he whispered softly, but Milan could detect an edge of irony barely concealed beneath it. He was making fun of her! So what if he was a little right and now only his black robes were visible from outside the alcove, a large black spot in the blackness of the shadows? He had done that on purpose! Plus she had black eyes, not vibrant blue like him, her hair was black and her skin was slightly tanner than his blinding white flesh. If someone was compromising them, it was _him_.

They both held their breath when they heard the footsteps approach their hiding place, slowly passing them, and finally, finally fading into the oppressing silence of the castle.

Milan was looking up at the boy standing very close to her. He looked familiar. She had seen him around the castle before and guessed that he was Jason Sullivan's brother. It had surprised her how much the two boys looked alike. The only thing that set them apart was that he was blond, blue-eyed, and had a longer nose than his brother, and of course that he was in Ravenclaw. Jason had dark hair and dark eyes and a larger mouth. His mouth was very nice indeed, especially when he smiled that wicked Slytherin smile... Milan didn't want to think about that stupid crush of hers, especially when she was this close to someone who resembled him so much. Their positions were embarrassing enough as it was. She hoped she wasn't blushing.

As soon as she estimated that it was safe to move, she pushed against the boy and took a step away from him. She took a furtive look in the corridor, and once she checked the cost was clear, she bent in half and ran lithely toward the staircase hidden behind the tapestry of the Gnomish Forest, not looking back once.

Paul readjusted the jar he had hidden within the folds of his robes, and took off after the girl, needing to get to the Comon Room without wasting time. It appeared they would have to finish their journey together because they were in the same House. He had recognized the girl but he didn't remember her name. Pulling his hood on was a good call, he thought, he should have thought of it. But her sudden appearance had almost gotten him caught, stupid girl.

The journey up to the CR was slow work. After they had both safely crossed to the hidden staircase behind the tapestry and had quickly ascended it, he grabbed the girl by the arm and turned her around. She was easily thrown off balance, and she looked ditrustedly up at him. _Tonight he could not get caught_, he reminded himself. Reckless behavior was his specialty, but he wasn't dumb either, and tonight he needed to be on the safe side, and for that he needed a plan.

"I'll hold the tapestry open just a bit on the left side, you take a look outside, then we move to the right. Let's make it quick" The girl just nodded and took the last steps up the stairs. It seemed she just wished this to be over too. When they were both on the landing, they put his plan to motion. Paul held the heavy tapestry barely open and the girl looked outside. Once that was done she got up from her crouch and whispered: "It's clear".

They crept off along the corridor in the same manner, watching each other's back, so to speak. They walked fast and stuck to the shadows. They were ready to jump into a hiding place at any moment, and they waited for each other's signal to cross a corridor, avoiding the patches of moonlight on the floor. They had a tense moment when a ghost approached, the boy pulling Milan out of the way barely in time. At last they ascended the long spiral staircase leading to the entrance of their tower.

Once they had given the answer to the bird guarding the door, they finally walked into safety, heaving a sigh of relief. Then only, they turned to face each other.

"What's in there?" Milan asked as she saw the boy carefully extract a paper bag from his robes. It looked heavy. Where had he gotten that from?

The guy only smirked and moved toward a couch nearby, plopping down heavily on it. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a few seconds before answering with a question of his own:

"What's your name? I can't remember it. Something Italian..." he trailed off. She decided to give up on getting an answer. She was guessing he wouldn't tell her anything about his contraband, and maybe it was better if they didn't ask complicated questions anyways. "Milan. Milan Simon. And FYI, my name has nothing to do with the city. Look it up."

"I'm Paul S-" "-Sullivan" she finished for him. "You look a lot like your brother" she elaborated at his curious glance. "Jerk Sullivan" she couldn't help but add in an undertone.

If anything, Paul smiled. "Ah, I see you know Jason. You guys in the same year or something?" Milan plopped down on the nearing armchair herself and replied. "Yeah, we share a few classes." She always felt a little bit weird in the double classes she had with the Slytherins, and she didn't have her friends there, she was sort of on her own. But that wasn't even the problem. Not even close. It was more that Sullivan and Nott, his best buddy, were notorious trouble-makers. Notorious to all except the professors; they were that sneaky. They always did gross stuff, like that time in Herbology when they did an Engorgio on the green and gooey stuff that oozed out of the plant they studied, and Sprout didn't notice until it was covering the whole greenhouse's floor, with no indication of the source. She'd had the stuff all over her favourite leather boots, which it was a bitch to take off from…

Milan grimaced in distate and saw Paul was smiling at her. It seemed like he wasn't a fan of his brother either. And like her, he was stuck with Jason in his life, although not for the same reasons. Jason was a part of hers because he was too much on her mind.

Paul saw the grimace and shared a look with Milan. He was beginning to like the dark girl with a weird name that was not a city.


End file.
